If you’re into coachbuilt station wagons, but the 1978 Cadillac DeVille we featured yesterday struck you as a bit gauche, perhaps you’ll find this more to your liking: a 1927 Rolls-Royce Phantom station wagon! You can’t get much classier than that! Reader Matt Williams kindly shared the eBay listing for this stately wagon with us; it’s also posted on Auto Trader, among other sites, all with the same $67,500 asking price from Queens, New York dealer Gullwing Motors. With the way vintage Rolls-Royces are sometimes priced, this seems like a bargain without an extra zero tacked onto the end!
From the Auto Trader listing, we learn that this station wagon body was built in Derby by I. Wilkinson & Son, which, remarkably, is still in business today. Incidentally, the rest of the car was built in Derby, too; Rolls-Royce car production didn’t move to Crewe until 1946. Gullwing notes that all of the wood is sound, but could use a varnish—fair enough, at the price.
I’m intentionally using the term “station wagon” here, instead of the more traditionally English terms “estate car” or “shooting brake,” because that’s what I would guess the historic function of this vehicle was: ground transport for the tourist trade. That’s the only use I can think of for which these dreadfully uncomfortable looking park bench-style seats would be appropriate…you certainly wouldn’t want to go for a pleasure cruise or any long drives in them. The upside, I guess, is that there’s no need to worry about wear and tear on the upholstery!
Little information is given about this Rolls in any of Gullwing’s ads, but we are assured that it is “mechanically sound and drivable.” The massive, 7.7-liter inline six certainly looks both quite original and well-cared for. This UK-built car would have a four-speed manual transmission; Rolls-Royces built at the company’s Springfield, Massachusetts factory used a three-speed. In typical fashion, the engine’s output was only listed as “adequate,” with a 40/50 designation only indicating its taxable horsepower; actual output is likely in the neighborhood of 100 horsepower.
Gullwing sums up its brief description of this magnificent wagon by saying that it is “complete and highly usable, universally admired, and perfect for any event,” which seems like underselling to me. Those awful seats are the only thing that would stop me from driving a car like this as much and as often as I could!
Jeez, throw some patio chair cushions on the seats and drive!
That’s what I was thinking
Now that’s a real patio ornament.
This is the Surf Woody for rich kids! All it needs is a gold-plated Rat Fink hanging from the mirror.
Am I right?
As mentioned in the add that it could use a revarnish. The fact is if this car doesn’t get a refurbish soon it will need much more than a revarnish. These old woodies need to be redone every couple of year depending on out door exposure of course. I can see where this car would be a real head turner at any event, its so different than what you usually see when it comes to RR. Truth is when it comes to the seats I think I’d remove them an put them in my closed gazebo and put nicer seats in the Rolls.
Sort of strange that the wood has been left in an unvarnished state. You have to wonder why Gullwing doesnt spend the minimal amount (relative to the ask) to preserve the body. There looks to be some serious delamination below the beltline. But then it is eighty years old. The seats dont bother me even though my boney butt would eventually ache. That’s part of its very unique charm. Don’t know much about the Rolls Shooting Brakes or where this one fits in the Shooting Brake universe, but here’s one I’d like to have.
Probably one of the most appealing working station wagons I’ve seen. ‘Working’ because I think it was probably a service vehicle for a resort or old hotel. It would likely have been used to pick up guests at the train station and transport them and their luggage to check-in. That would have been before air travel became the norm. I have seen a couple of these old resort/hotel service vehicles before, altho not by RR.
Those wood slat seats would be preferred over cloth because they would last longer and be easier to slide in and out on. The luggage area in the back would have been used for carrying……their luggage. Coachbuilders back in the day would have been willing and able to body cars, especially expensive ones like this, any way the customer requested.
The plate looks like Washington state, so it looks like it has made its way back across the country to be at Gullwing. The photo setting sure doesn’t look like NYC, so that fits. Pics were probably taken before it got to Queens. The listing says it’s in Queens but I would want to make certain that it’s not 3K miles West before bidding.
Interesting twin-plug engine. I’m no expert on these, but the overlapping “RR” on the side plates says it’s likely the proper engine.
From the look of Gullwing’s other offerings it looks like they have gone upmarket. In any case, this is a very appealing and unusual special bodied RR. My guess is that if they can find the right person they might get their price, or close.
It’s really interesting and i agree about the comments on revarnishing. Gullwing offers cars along a broad line of pricing, and if i considered this car I’d have to do something about the wood, paint color and seats.
No flying lady on radiator cap ?
Clearly a rebodied car. Very easy to confirm apart from the amateurish design and construction built for a low price in the 1960s or 1970s. The whole history of this car is known and easily available once you know the chassis number.
Just. So. Cool.
I don’t have my Rolls-Royce information books handy, but I think the Phantom should have a 6 digit chassis number, not the 5 listed [22118]. If we had the complete chassis number, and looked it up in the list of chassis produced, we would probably find this car had a large limousine or enclosed sedan body when new.
In Britain’s immediate post- WW2 era, these large fuel hungry vehicles were plentiful and often very inexpensive, and few people wanted them. Small specialty coachbuilders often took those aging enclosed bodies off the chassis, and fitted new bodies like the shooting break shown here, or a smart little 2 seat roadster.
Problem is, these later bodies were rarely built to the exacting standards of Rolls-Royce. Serious collectors and the Rolls-Royce car clubs usually consider these to be bastardized cars.
Travis McGee !!!
Travis McGee’s Rolls Royce, “Miss Agnes,” was an electric blue Rolls Royce pickup truck.
Absolutely a shooting brake, not a hotel car (station wagon). Any hotel able to run a Rolls-Royce would see no sense in inflicting wooden seats on paying customers, even in austerity post-war Britain.
Bill McCoskey is almost certainly correct, this is most likely to be a (surprisingly common) post WW2 tax-dodge to uprate an old but servicable chassis. The Phantom was top of the range and would not be bodied like this, nor would the fall away tail be a 1920s feature. That tail makes the car much more elegant than most RR woodies and worth the money to someone, particularly as vintage racing paddock dressing.
Finally! A true shooting brake. Burn this into your collective brains. This is meant to convey a shooting party over unimproved roads, into fields, across shallow streams, etc.
I think you’re wrong – this was probably built as a clumsy and ugly limousine and at some point the owner realized it was nearly sale-proof as a limo so he had this body built by Wilkinson. There’s virtually no chance it came new with this body – it is quite awkward, the sides are much too “flat” the rear panel is a mere expediency, not hardly designed at all and the seats?? I guess they show where the owner ran out of money or simply decided to cut his losses. I know a little bit about these cars – I had one of the very few Rolls-Royces delivered new as a woodie shooting brake and the level of finish as well as design is just a world away from this car. Don’t get me wrong, if it runs well and doesn’t need a new $15,000 cylinder head it’s probably a fair buy at say $35,000 and very few cars will ever attract more attention at an event or even a supermarket parking lot! (I used mine to haul yard debris to the dump, and pick up my Christmas trees too).
Plus, a true shooting brake will have a rear hatch for the dogs to easily exit. The only way the dogs will get out of this vehicle is to jump out the window.
A run on “bastardized” or “creative” modifications. Some readers are appalled, some, like me, appreciate the ones that turn out to be handsome – the Studimino, this Shooting Brake, the Caddy wagon, but not the Seville with fake sidemounted spares. But that is what makes horse races.
If the interior was missing,you could
source some seats from your local recreational park! Lol…
Wow,I never knew that they made a woody,incredible find!
Seems like quite a bargain,cuz there can’t be many of these?
Really cool style,and elegance,would be nice to see at an
“all woodie”show or event! LUV IT.
Sorry Madmatt “they” didn’t make this or any other woodie. It’s a re-body, a way to get some more use out of a well-built chassis with a very unfriendly (most likely) limousine body. In fact when this car was built, Rolls-Royce had never build and sold a complete car, it just wasn’t done.